Category: music

David Osborne, founder of the Raga Dolls Salon Orchestra, “doesn’t care when people clap, ‘or try to make anyone feel uncomfortable if they fail to conform to classical music’s quasi-religious ritual. We tell jokes. We laugh at ourselves.'”

“More Finnish soloists, the premiere of a new Finnish opera to mark the centenary year of Finnish independence in 2017, and another new Finnish opera already before that – these are some of the plans put forward by 53-year-old tenor Jorma Silvasti, who has been named to be the next artistic director of the Savonlinna Opera Festival.”

“The Sacramento Philharmonic reached its goal of raising $150,000 by a self-imposed May 15 deadline, persuading the organization’s board of directors to vote Tuesday evening to keep the orchestra operating through the 2012-13 season.”

“ANU management has backed down over its plans to ‘spill’ the positions of 32 of its tenured and permanent academic and administrative staff at the School of Music today … While this does not change its plans to eliminate 10 of the 32 positions, it gives staff a greater chance to fight for their jobs or a chance at redeployment – as well as access to full redundancy provisions.

The St. Romanos International Composers Competition, launched this year as part of the state-run St. Petersburg International Choir Festival, aims to bring the church’s music (more central to worship than in the West) out of the powerful shadow of Russian Romanticism and into the 21st century. Roughly 300 scores were submitted; large, enthusiastic crowds turned out to hear the winning works.

Rafael Payare, a 32-year-old Venezuelan who has been assistant to Claudio Abbado and Gustav Dudamel, won the Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen last weekend. His prize includes €20,000 as well as guaranteed engagements with 24 European symphony orchestras over the next three years.

“At this moment in its history, when it is battling its way back from financial disaster and reduced to a fraction of its former size and activity, City Opera feels like a small company in town, closer to the ambitious young Gotham Chamber Opera with its $1 million budget than the behemoth Metropolitan Opera. It will have to stake out its own ground in size and artistic profile to draw audiences and donors.”

“Given the ever-rising costs of opera production, the company was forced to draw approximately $3.8 million from its reserve funds to break even for the fiscal year. Lyric had tapped into its Campaign for Excellence Fund to the tune of $4.3 million in fiscal 2011, and $2.7 million the previous year, to balance its books. All three were planned withdrawals.”

You can’t witness thousands of rabid Kid Rock fans rewarding the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with a roaring standing ovation and breaking into chants of “DSO! DSO!” without recognizing elitist stereotypes about classical music being put out to pasture.